Trump again called Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed “Mohammed” at a Georgia rally and said he does not care about the heat, declaring a president can use any name he wants.
President Donald Trump brought the name back out before a hangar crowd at Dalton Municipal Airport in Georgia on Friday and refused to walk it back.
He told supporters he had already taken heat for using “Mohammed” for Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, then made clear he would keep doing it. The line landed nine days after a Truth Social post that used the same name on the eve of El-Sayed’s first debate with Republican Mike Rogers.
Daily Caller reporting captured Trump tying the moniker to the office he holds and to the freedom he claims with it.
"You know, I took a lot of heat for calling him Mohammed. I don’t care. I’m the president of the United States. I can call you whatever the h*** I want. I can call you whatever I want, Mohammed."
A CSPAN clip posted October 16 carried the same core message: he does not care, and a president can call a candidate whatever he wants.
Trump had already labeled the nominee “Mohammed El-Sayed” on Truth Social the night before the Oct. 8 debate in Grand Rapids.
He also branded El-Sayed a “RADICAL Extremist, Terrorist Sympathizer” who “goes back to the days of the Jihad.” Those were Trump’s words, posted under his own name, not a staff paraphrase.
El-Sayed, a Muslim former health official born in Michigan and also referred to as Abdulrahman, answered the next morning on X. He did not treat the name as a harmless gag.
"He knows my name is Abdul. He says it everyday. But he’s not just attacking me. He’s attacking all of us. He thinks so low of us. He thinks he can use my name and my faith to distract us from the suffering his policies are inflicting on us at the pump, at the grocery store, and at the doctor’s office. He thinks we don’t know any better. It’s time for change."
That is the exchange Democrats and advocacy groups wanted to freeze in place. Trump used the Georgia stop to thaw it out and own it again.
The seat is open. Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is retiring. Rogers, the Republican, holds Trump’s endorsement and faces El-Sayed for the job.
Their first debate in Grand Rapids on Oct. 8 was contentious. They are scheduled to meet again on Oct. 21. El-Sayed has trailed in advertising money by close to two-to-one.
Trump’s rally line was not a stray ad-lib about random Middle Eastern names. It was a second pass at the same Michigan Democrat he had already tagged on social media, delivered while he was boosting the Republican in that race.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the president’s language bigoted. Muslim advocacy groups have long accused Trump of demeaning their communities.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a report this year that linked rising anti-Muslim sentiment partly to Trump’s immigration enforcement. That framing treats tough enforcement and hard rhetoric as the driver of bias.
Trump’s answer in the hangar was the opposite of a apology tour. He named the heat, dismissed it, and repeated the name. He cast the fight as a president’s right to speak plainly about a candidate he views as extreme.
El-Sayed’s post tried to move the argument from his record to his faith and to prices at the pump, the grocery store, and the doctor’s office. Trump’s posts and rally lines tried to keep the argument on ideology, national security posture, and whether the nominee is too radical for a Senate seat in a big industrial state.
Voters can read both in plain sight. One side says the name is a smear on Muslims. The other side says the nominee’s politics are the problem and that the president will not be policed on nicknames.
By Friday in Dalton, Trump had used the Mohammed label in a social post before a debate and again in a campaign speech in Georgia. He said he took heat. He said he did not care. He said the office gives him the latitude to keep saying it.
Michigan still has another debate on the calendar. The ads are uneven. The president has already shown he will not retire the line to satisfy Schumer or the activist groups circling the race.
Presidents set tones. This one just told a hangar full of voters he will name radicals as he sees them, and that the pearl-clutching will not draft his script.
